June 2009 |
| Dear Anna, |
| Last time you wrote you said you’d like more information about Gram, Susan Dorsey McLaughlin. I’ve been gathering my thought and memories of her. I knew and called her “Big Mama.” That is probably because I was under her care from when I was a baby. My mother had a hard time being a mother at that time and I later heard quiet talk about her ‘breakdown.” Anyway, “Big Mama” wasn’t that big, just tall and statuesque with perfect posture, head held high and her back ramrod straight. Later, when most of us suffered back problems, we called it the “McLaughlin back.” She was generous with love and attention, and she embraced her homemaker skills with zeal. She accepted this role with pride, honor and dignity. A woman of deep faith and she practiced her religion with her own passion – holy water at the door to her bedroom, her rosary at her bedside and pictures of Christ in the home – all made her a faithful servant of the Church which was right next door to the farm. |
| Her home was squeaky clean with massive efforts spring and fall to clean the whole house, wash walls and curtains and floors waxed. Much to my mother’s chagrin, she joined other women in the church to clean on their knees the floors of the church spring and fall. |
| I have many cherished memories of her: coming in from the potato harvest and putting our feet in the warm oven and eating freshly made doughnuts; she always called me “dear;” I was elated to have her permission to pick sweet peas my grandfather planted every year for her; her porch (also known as the davenport, piazza and veranda) had a blue ceiling just like the sky and one piece of furniture was a large rocker painted white with wall paper flowers cut and pasted on the back. Her kitchen was to be admired – she had a 25 gallon ceramic flour bin to service her daily baking, which I thought to be unrivaled. |
| She cooked in a wood stove oven until I was six or seven. I can remember the day her new electric stove was delivered. The wood burning one remained in its spot for occasional use and for winter heat. My grandfather made his daily oatmeal on that stove. I know that as a young wife she cooked three meals a day for 40 men during the harvest. |
| The pride of her kitchen was a pantry in the next room. It housed shelves of apples for pies, homemade mincemeat, green tomato pickles, sharp pickles, preserved garden vegetables and my all-time favorite, sweet crabapple jelly made from the fruit of a crabapple tree in the yard. This pantry was so much work, I cannot imagine the time and effort it took. |
| We spent many hours sitting on the lawn, shelling new peas, snapping green beans and cutting the tops off of the carrots. Quiet conversation and stories abounded. Gram always had, with the exception of the wood stove, the latest utility. I remember an electric press iron that you sat at like a sewing machine to press sheets, pillowcases, towels and other flat pieces. She and Papa had one of the first televisions in town, though she turned it off when beer commercials came on –“Damn shits(Schlitz), she’d say. |
| Gram was a neatly dressed woman. She wore Sears work house dresses. A freshly starched apron adorned with her brooch of the day. She wore a corset with many ties and snaps that were hand made in Canada, a few miles away. She loved jewelry and hats and wore both whenever she went out. Before marrying she taught in a one-room school. In her later years she would come to visit our back yard in the summer after Sunday mass. My father had to pitchers of orange juice on the picnic table, one spiked with vodka, the other plain with ice cubes just for her. God forbid she drank the wrong one, my mother said as she announced Gram’s arrival. |
| We had a lot of family dinners at her house. She open the doors to the fancy living room complete with velvet couch and side chairs and large club chairs. The piano was my hide out, though all I could find were hymnals. I once found a diary with emotional notes about the suffrage movement and details about several train trips to Florida. |
| A friend who came to call several times a year, lived across the street and was a pig and potato farmer. Freddie was a big man with a ruddy Irish face and the widest of grins. He wore muddied overalls and manure encrusted boots. Our grandmother escorted him to the fancy room and announced him to our grandfather. She then went to the kitchen and poured whisky into two lead crystal goblets. Papa liked it “neat” and sometimes he would tell Gram, “Ye watered it, Susie.” Freddie and “Romey” talked a long time about potato farming, the latest crop, other farmers’ crops and so forth. Rumor had it that Freddie smuggled two wives across the border with Canada in potato barrels. The fate of the replaced wives was not known, though some speculated they lay at the bottom of the manure piles on the farm! |
| Well, Anna, these are only a few memories that I have of our grandmother. I loved her greatly – she was my model for independence, beauty and grace. She lived to attend my wedding in July 1964 – she wore a blue lace and silk dress with a fur fox stole. The smile on her face that day was incomparable. She loved playing bridge with her friends. Socializing in that town was hard in winter and so when the opportunity presented itself to get together, great effort was expended to attend. They ignored the rules of bridge, bidding over and under each other: one heart , one club, three no trump, one spade and so forth.. After all what they were really there for was conversation and goodies. The game was an afterthought. |
| Once when stopped by a policeman, we had one, for failing to stop at a stop sign, she rolled down the window and said, “Young man, I know I stopped because I put the car in second gear.” |
| Her demise was long and painful. It exacted heavy toll on my mother and Dad. And I don’t think my mother was ever the same again. “Eva, dear,” I hear her in my musings. |
| Lots of love, hope you all are well. |
| Sheila |